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There is an ongoing debate as to whether businesses and programs, that promise you a chance to leave your day job, are legitimate business opportunities or scams/pyramid schemes. Multi-level marketing (MLM) companies offer you a chance to be your own boss, make lots of money and new friends in the process.

Here are some major indicators of pyramid schemes:

* Programs that focus mainly on recruitment of new people

* Plans that claim you will make money through continued growth of your “downline” rather than through your own sales of products

* Programs that ask distributors to purchase expensive inventory

* Plans that ask you to sign a contract or pay money to participate in a multi-level marketing program, or any business opportunity, without letting you take time to read all of the paperwork

* Products or services are just vehicles for recruiting, and may be gimmicks and/or overpriced. Even high quality products may serve as a cover for recruitment activities.

Compensation Plans

A MLM company will have one of several Marketing Payment Structures. It can be a Matrix Plan, a Binary Plan, a Breakaway Plan or other.

The distinct feature of a Matrix Plan is its limited width. Unlike other MLM compensation plans, a Matrix restricts the number of distributors you can sponsor on your first level, usually to less than five. The most commonly used Matrix MLM plans are 4 x 7, 5 x 7, 3 x 9 and 2×12.

A Binary Plan is a Two-Legged (Left leg, Right Leg) structure where each new distributor or member is placed in either of the left or right subtree. One subtree is called a Power Leg or Profit Leg and the second subtree is a Profit Leg or a weak leg.

Advantages of a binary MLM plan are:

Spillover, unlimited depth, fast expansion, it’s volume driven, and there can be multiple business centers.

The Breakaway Plan, also known as the Stairstep Plan, has different status stages or steps. Once you reach a certain level you are allowed to “Breakaway” from your sponsor and run your company individually.

Advantages of the Stairstep Breakaway MLM Plan are:

The earning potential on more levels, no limit on the number of people who can be recruited into your first generation line, and there is no limitation on the number of recruits that your downline distributors are allowed to recruit.

It’s important to do your due diligence and check out all programs you may be thinking of joining. Discuss it with a spouse, a knowledgeable and experienced friend, an accountant, or lawyer. You can also check out the company with the BBB. If you feel that you are being high-pressured or that you’re not being given enough time to study and evaluate the details, look elsewhere.

Once you have found a legitimate MLM company that you want to be a part of, be prepared to put in the work to make it profitable. If you want success, be disciplined and treat it like a business and be willing to follow advice from others who have made it. Although using multi-level marketing for supplemental income can be a good plan, understand that it will take time to make it your full-time income source.

“Every business is simply a set of systems and marketing just happens to be the most important of these systems.”

As marketing is a business system, treating it as such helps to take away the mystery of its function in your business which permits you to create consistent, predictable results from the operation of your marketing system.

In today’s ever-changing marketplace, it is not enough to have a website. A successful home business requires online marketing strategies the same as an offline business. For your marketing success you must engage in effective marketing to get new customers. In order to achieve your business goals you must establish a budget and master online marketing skills. Here are…

A sales funnel refers to the buying process that customers are led through when purchasing products/services. It is divided into several steps, which differ depending on the particular sales model.

The traditional model used marketing to fill the top of the funnel and sales for nurturing leads through to conversion. This model is still used, although customer behavior has changed. This shift is a result of how much research prospective customers do before engaging with you. If you’re selling a product or service, there are different points of contact between you and the buyer. You combine sales with marketing to ensure that qualified leads get personalized attention when necessary.

At the top of your funnel are prospective customers who have decided to connect with you through your lead magnet or sign-up form. Once you have their information, which is usually name and email, you can follow up with them. This starts the process of them getting to know, like and trust you. Now you can begin to tell them about your product/service, because they have opted in to receive more information. As a marketer you have to think about the entire purchasing process from the buyer’s perspective.

An Internet Sales Funnel is really a marketing framework that represents the stages from your initial contacts to actual sales. It’s basically a way of funneling prospects into your business and building trust. A sales funnel gives you a single place to advertise. Keep in mind these Aspects of An Internet Sales Funnel when setting up your business.

Internet marketing is a number of marketing activities that can be done online which include affiliate marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, blogging, paid marketing, search engine optimization and more.

Before you do anything be sure to get all the information you can.

Understanding The Internet Marketing Field

There’s a lot to learn, however everyone has to start somewhere. There are a lot of terms that may or may not be confusing to you, depending on your knowledge of the field. There are four general phases to really understanding internet marketing and making money online.

1) What’s actually happening online and how is money made?

At the start you have to focus on value, not revenues. In the beginning you do the most amount of work for the least return.

If you’re short on cash and hoping to make some fast money online, you’ll be disappointed. There’s no such thing as getting rich quick. All these schemes are selling you short. You have to put in the time and do the work while adding enormous value.

There are things associated with internet marketing such as affiliate marketing, network marketing, multi-level marketing and more. Affiliate marketing is really tough unless you have an enormous following or you know how to build first-rate squeeze pages and great sales funnels. You need to know the virtual landscape before undertaking creating your own digital products and sales funnels.

2) What do you want to do?

Once you understand how things work you need to decide what you want to do. Do you want to be an affiliate marketer, a network marketer, a blogger?

Whatever you do you’ll need traffic. You need to drive traffic to your offers with squeeze pages or landing pages which have a call to action and a sign-up form. This is your first contact with customers or your follow up after you’ve made initial contact. Learn the right skills as you go so that you can become effective. It will take time. Just don’t give up.

3) Know how you will communicate.

You should actually decide this before you start online. Will you blog, build a list, use social media or do JVs? Whatever you do, be straight with people and learn to communicate effectively and understand every stage of the process.

4) What’s your passion?

Decide what you’re passionate about and pick a niche. Get a custom domain and set up a professional-looking site that will be your place of business to which everything will be linked. All of your advertising, SEO, social media, etc. will be directed here.

Create free enticing offers to capture names and email addresses with your squeeze pages to start building your funnels. This will all take time, and you will profit in the end. It may all seem confusing at first. Internet marketing is a constant complicated process. Beware of unscrupulous individuals bearing shiny trinkets. Follow and learn from reputable people online. Don’t fall for the hype.

So, view the big picture of what’s actually happening online and how money is made, decide what you want to do and how you wish to communicate, figure out your passion and pick a niche.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” That also applies to business. Don’t depend on one source for all of your income. You need several ways to make money:

Sell information products
Sell other people’s products
Create a membership site
Create an online freelance business

You’ve got customers coming into your business every day and they are buying your products and services. Or you may be just starting a new venture. You might think the Internet is too complicated. You’re already too busy. So why do you need an online business? There are four reasons to have your business online that will probably make you reconsider.

Cost

With a traditional brick and mortar business, you have overhead costs for the space, stock, and staff. You can run an online business with just one person, a computer and Internet access. Setting up an online business requires a website. You’ll have to purchase a domain name and hosting which will cost a minimal amount – less than $50. You can do an online search for these and comparison shop.

Audience

You can potentially reach millions of people on the Internet, and target a specific audience to whom you can sell directly. These are prospects looking for your products and services.

Hours of Operation

With your online business you’re available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Since you’re working from your computer you can be available when you choose, sell products and take customer inquiries at any time of day or night, because you’ll be using automated systems.

Products

You don’t have to have your own products to sell. In a brick and mortar operation, you would buy stock from a manufacturer or wholesaler and then sell it. With an online business you don’t have to buy product or worry about delivering the product or sorting out the payment systems.
The product owner takes care of all that. This business model is known as affiliate marketing. It’s a good place to start when you’re new to online business.

You need a good business plan that incorporates your final goal and the steps to reach it.

Online marketing is using the internet, to reach people, to spread the word about you and your company’s products or services. It’s doing anything you can do online to get more people seeing what you have to offer and to get them to eventually buy from you.

In summary, the four reasons to have your business online are no overhead for a brick and mortar space, it’s cost effective, you can reach millions of people, No set hours of operation, and you can sell other people’s products as an affiliate marketer.

Multi-level marketing companies basically promise a chance to leave your 9-5 job, be your own boss, make lots of money and to make new friends in the process. The ongoing debate is whether these companies and programs are legitimate business opportunities.

According to Wikipedia Multi-level marketing (MLM) is a marketing strategy in which the sales force is compensated not only for sales they generate, but also for the sales of the other salespeople that they recruit. This recruited sales force is referred to as the participant’s “downline”, and can provide multiple levels of compensation. Most commonly, the salespeople are expected to sell products directly to consumers by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing. Some people use direct selling as a synonym for MLM, although MLM is only one type of direct selling.

Although there are all kinds of variations, the bottom lines is that a sales funnel gives you a single place to advertise. You only need a single list of prospects, a single blog, a single squeeze page or LCP. You need one place to advertise.

If you have twenty-five different products, you don’t need to try advertising each one. You need a funnel with one defined entry point. Once people sign up to your list, in time they will find out about everything you have to offer, and find something they like and become a buyer / client. You may have two lists – one for those who have purchased and the other for those who have not. But, to start you only need one list. Building a list is one of the most important things you need to do.

Owning a WordPress dot org blog is the way to get organic (free) traffic. You can place your lead capture form on it and all your products and/or your affiliate merchandise.

Here are three technical aspect of setting up an Internet sales funnel. You need a:

1) Lead Capture Page (LCP)

A lead capture page is a web page you send your traffic to; make your main purpose clear, which is to click on the button and enter their information. Don’t have distractions on the page that keep them from seeing the call to action. You can do an online search for LCP examples to get an idea how they should look. Your LCP will direct prospects to your sales page.

2) Sales Page

Your sales page will provide a solution to prospects problems. You can use a video (bridge video) for an introduction where they can see you. Introduce yourself, relate to them, introduce them to the solution, and then send them to the sales page. Present a sense of urgency; limited time or limited space to bring them to the call to action. You can use the video before or after the capture page. It depends on what and how you’re promoting.

You might be promoting a webinar that shows the benefits of your product or service. In which case, you will have used a LCP to get signups, and then present an offer at the end of the webinar.

Make the bridge video short, concise, and to the point. It’s used to build a rapport with the audience. Then send them to a sales video which will be longer and presents the solutions and benefits to problems they may be experiencing. The next step is sending them to the sales page, which offers more details of your offer or product. Show your prospects the advantages of having or using it. Discuss the main points in more detail. Don’t list every little detail or feature or button; just the main points that relate to your audience or prospects. If you’re selling for someone other than yourself, the sales pages are usually already done for you.

3) Follow Up

You need a way to contact prospects; an email service to send all the information you’re obtaining from the LCP. This is the backbone of your funnel. This is where you send all the information from the capture page. You can search the Internet for such services. You want to continue to build rapport with the list of people you now have. You want to continue to build on your interaction with them. Do this with an email service which provides an autoresponder. This is the backbone of your sales funnel.

With an autoresponder you can set up follow-up emails for whatever you wish and for as long as you want. You can set these messages to go out at certain intervals and for whatever period of time you wish. If you have something special to offer at any point, you can send a broadcast just for that.

You’ll be well on your way to online business success using these 3 Technical Aspects of Setting Up An Internet Sales Funnel: A lead capture page, a sales page, and an autoresponder.